Post Antibiotic era

[MrRob]

Not sure if this should be put here or in the news section, but a worrying development none the less.

It looks as though in a few years we will have simple bacteria killing us again like in the middle ages. What are peoples plans to prepare for this as even though i generally refuse antibiotics for this reason (unless my body just inst winning the battle), it doesn't stop everyone else eating them like sweets and you end up getting a drug resistant strain through no fault of your own.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34857015

The link below shows the increase between the issuing of antibiotics between August and December last year. Its shocking and I think doctors are partly to blame by issuing prescriptions to keep people quiet and to stop ringing / coming in for viral infections like colds.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34790038

This is the type of thing I am most worried about as although I have a great immune system and am rarely ill, when something does get in I go down hard and my body really struggles to get rid of it (although as already stated I do generally refuse antibiotics).

[colb16]

Dr Apocalypse will hopefully be able to shed more light on this for us I am sure but today the Independent and several other papers are running an article stating that tests in china have shown that an ecoli strain (and this will also be relevant to other infection types including pneumonia) have become resistant to polymixins - the final line in antibiotic defence. Here are some links. It looks like this could have serious, worldwide implications. Is this something we can prep for beyond regular hygiene measures? Here are some links:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 40166.html

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanin ... 7/fulltext

[whenfires]

Antibiotic resistance: World on cusp of 'post-antibiotic era'


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34857015

We've heard this kind of thing before but never as near-future as predicted here

[pseudonym]

Threads merged

[Plymtom]

The only way you can prep for this is to increase research into new antibiotics because should the situation reach it's natural conclusion, we're in trouble, imagine a world in which infections became life threatening, we would have to be so careful to the extreme, it could be worse than it was before antibiotics because our own immune systems have probably been weakened by over us, lives we routinely save as a result of battlefield injuries for instance would be incredibly hard to do without them.

[colb16]

With regards to the development of new antibiotics I found this BBC article from January. Let's hope the Boston scientists have been making good progress since.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-30657486


The fact that there had been no new antibiotics since the 80s seems like an awful long time for the bugs to build their resistance. From what has come to light today it seems that overuse of antibiotics in animals farmed for food is a serious contributor to the problem.

[DrApocalypse]

Hello all,

Yes this is an area of paramount concern. The main culprits, as already stated above, is the international livestock farming industry. It is routine to supplement antibiotics into feedstock in many countries and this encourages reservoirs of resistant strains.

This is beyond our own personal influence. However, there is a significant contributing factor of our own human overuse of antibiotics. This we can control - to an extent. The two factors that influence this are 1)Physician associated factors (as doctors we are the ones overprescribing the antibiotics, even through the best intentions) and 2) patient derived factors. We are all patients at some point, and when we feel poorly we want a cure. Often as patients we fixate on antibiotics as the treatment for coughs, sore throats, sinusitis, mild ear infections, the list goes on.

There has been a lot of research done in recent years that has demonstrated repeatedly that the majority of antibiotic prescriptions are not neccessary. The human body is exceptionally good at sorting itself out. The problem is that we all want what we think is best for us and we have grown up in an era where antibiotics have been widely overused, so doctors actually are put under a huge amount of pressure from patients to prescribe.

We can all do our bit by managing the vast majority of illness ourselves. There are good resources available online and I would definitely digest this before TSHTF as it will enable those of you who have a stockpile of antibiotics use them more appropriately.

There are some good "self management of infection" leaflets at:

http://www.rcgp.org.uk/clinical-and-res ... FD9E7&_z=z

Another good website is NHS Choices. There is information on a wide range of conditions, and the following link is some information about antibiotics specifically:

http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/ARC/Pages/AboutARC.aspx


Being personally more responsible will help reduce the emergency of fully resistant strains, but the effort needs to be coordinated with changes in agricultural practice, vetinary practice and with a push to develop new antibiotics.

The cynic in me feels that the lack of real development in new antibiotics in the last thirty years is because pharma companies profit much more from chronic disease medicatios, where their drug may be taken for fifty years, rather than a five day course of antibiotics. Given that bringing a new drug to market can cost in excess of £1 billion easily, they just don't see the return on investment of developing esoteric ultra specific antibiotics to benefit relatively few people (at the moment, whilst most bacteria can still be hit with relatively cheap drugs).

[Arzosah]

Thanks for the RGCP linkie! Very useful

[Mad Scientist]

I remember a brilliant documentary about fighting bacterial infections with "friendly" viruses. In the60's a team of Russian scientists started using viruses (called T4 bacteriophages) that were specific to certain bacteria and didn't harm the body. A solution of a specific virus was sprayed onto the wound or applied some other way and the viruses would attack ONLY the infection leaving the patient unscathed. Success rate was excellent and soon a huge virus library was built up. Sadly a huge power cut switched off the freezer used to house the "library" and the viruses were all killed. This never caught on as antibiotics were becoming commonplace by then. Viruses were cheaper to find, grow keep and apply. They also mutate rapidly and "keep up" more or less with resistance efforts from the bacteria. Come back 'phages all is forgiven. Looks like we've got to look to the past to sort out the future.

[Plymtom]

Looks like we've got to look to the past to sort out the future.

That could be said for a great many things Good to see there are some things in the pipeline, I just hope it comes in time.